Impermax Hack

TOTAL LOST $7K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1961 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The hacker managed to steal the private keys of the Impermax team. Despite the fact that the Impermax team took measures, the hacker still managed to escape with some of the money.

Details of the Exploit

Impermax is a DeFi platform for unlocking the value of LP tokens.

The hacker stole the funds, but did not sell them immediately. The stolen amount is enough to dump the token price to about 0. The team decided to make a frontrun attack by dumping a huge amount of tokens before the hacker does it.

The team plans to make a recovery process, during which a new $IMX token will be made, which will be sent to all holders of the old token.

Block Data Reference

Scammer addresses:

ETH

- Scammer address (A): https://etherscan.io/address/0x64e5ac2e…d5bf24

Scammer address (B): https://etherscan.io/address/0x1d2677ed…d1fb1b

Polygon:

- Scammer address (B): https://polygonscan.com/address/0x8e430d83…2daac2

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Impermax
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Borrowing and Lending
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Lending
Affected Token IMX
Official Website www.impermax.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @ImpermaxFinance
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Impermax's contract logic - root cause: borrowing and lending
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Likely — with a thorough Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $7K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Impermax, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 2022).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Security Audit History

Sources & References

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